Painted Chains
by msllamalover
Summary: A deserted corridor, a faded painting of a man most aristocratic and a thousand haunting memories for the ghostly woman who can't seem to look away.


_Disclaimer: Not mine, of course!  
A/N: Different characters for me, but I quite like it! A bit of a rambling piece, I think it works. For the love song challenge. Lyrics from the song Time is a Healer, by Eva Cassidy. Spare a review for the poor?_

_I found a picture of your smiling face  
Bringing old memories that I had locked away  
__The burden of anger from a heart filled with pain  
Was finally lifted and I smile at you again_

Somewhere in the very topmost floors of the castle, where students no longer wander, there is a painting. It is nearly a thousand years old. The charm has worn off long ago, so it's paint is duller than it was, dust has settled. The glory of the picture is not lost, not to her. It is a portrait, of the man she was once forced to love.

In anger and sadness, she had swished her long hair, narrowed her bright eyes and swept herself from the Castle. She stole the diadem that her mother loved and treasured beyond all else and ran, as far away as she could get. Sell her off to that proud Baron. His money, his pureblood status, they were the most important things to him. Didn't _she_ deserve to be the most important thing to the man she married? Besides, he wanted her for her wealth and beauty anyway; no basis for a marriage.

Her ghostly fingers glide towards the picture. She wants to desperately to feel the unevenness of the paint beneath her fingers, the roughness contrasting with the smoothness of the image, but she can't. She feels hardness, but her fingers risk plunging through the wall in a sensation that is neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

She floats above the flagstones, hands clasped, dress unmoving. It is the dress she died in, but the dark spots of silver-grey blood that used to glare at her as she looked down, she no longer is offended by. They are reminders of the life she left behind, of the mistakes she made.

The man in the picture, the Baron, isn't a handsome man. Not especially so, in any case. Remarkably aristocratic. There was a time, long ago, when she thought him to be handsome, but alas, that lasted not longer than a few weeks. That admiration was extinguished easily when the marriage was suggested not by herself or the Baron but her mother. She was not in love with the Baron. She was fond of him, oh yes, greatly fond, but her heart was filled with vanity and selfish cares. Too ignorant for love.

If she could cry, she thinks there would be tears on her cheeks. She feels cold, but then, she hasn't felt warm in nearly a thousand years. There is an aching in her chest, though she doesn't know where it's coming from. She doesn't have a heart anymore, does she? She's just a ghostly presence. She looks elegant and proud and the students rarely talk to her, like they do Nick or the Friar.

She sighs and take a look at the portrait of the man. Memories flash through her mind, the same ones she recalled more times than she cares to count. She recalls today her death. She fancies she can feel the cold silver of the knife plunging into her skin, the warm blood rising and spilling, the intense pain once more. This time she doesn't just feel her pain, but the Baron's too. She saw him face before she died, the grief and regret take over, and she saw him pull the knife from her body and sink it deeply into his. Unlike her, he kneels silently in front of her, no pain on his face greater than the pain of losing her to his anger.

And she can feel his sadness and anger and pain all at once, like she never had before. She feels, though she can barely believe it, sympathy for the man who killed her. He loved her. He wears his chains with a sad, sorry acceptance, and a look of necessary disdain on his face. Sometimes, when she catches herself looking at him (it doesn't happen very often, she doesn't allow that, and she never gets caught) her gaze seems to be draw to the blood on his chest, his mingled with hers. She has never noticed his chains before. Not truly. They were just something she felt that he deserved. They must be so _heavy. _

She wants him to take them off. It is a thought which occurs suddenly and surprisingly to her. Looking at his face in the picture, she wants that man back, she wants to know him again. Not this silent, terrifying man. The Baron she once knew.

She feels lighter too, somehow. There is a weight lifted off her that she didn't know was ever there. She's sure her dress, the bloody dress which has been still for all of her ghostly life, swishes around her feet. There is movement again, feeling again. She smiles. She smiles a wide, real smile, like she hasn't smiled in so many years. Too many years.

She drops her arms to her sides, almost feeling her dress beneath her fingers and on her skin. She laughs and dives through the floor. Time has been a slow, heavy companion, but it is finally brighter. Time is the greatest healer, healing the wounds she didn't realise she had carried with her.

She laughs, quietly, joyfully into the empty corridor. It is time for the Baron to receive her forgiveness. It is time for the chains of time to be cast away. It is time for the future.


End file.
